warning<\/a>\u00a0the U.S. might join the oil-rich and plastic-producing countries in actively blocking attempts to focus on upstream pollution prevention measures.<\/p>\nInformal talks this year suggest those fears have come true, delegates said. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe [U.S.] negotiators have not changed; they are still the same people,\u201d said the diplomatic source. \u201cBut 1754325193 they position themselves completely as \u2018like-minded\u2019 [countries] \u2014 meaning they are willing to discuss the entire downstream plastic cycle, but refuse to entertain the idea of any kind of production limitation.\u201d<\/p>\n
The biggest question marks hang over other plastic-producing and consuming countries like China, Brazil and India, which high-ambition countries see as more constructive partners than the like-minded group, even if their positions on reducing plastic production remain unclear.<\/p>\n
\u201c[T]here are positive shifts,\u201d said the Commission official. \u201c[T]he gap is not as wide as before, even if it\u2019s still there.\u201d<\/p>\n
But the EU, too, has to cede some ground, they added, signaling a readiness to forgo a precise plastic production cap or reduction target for now.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to see recognition of unsustainable production and consumption in [the treaty text]. Whether it will be a cap or a target in this treaty \u2014 that is probably unlikely, because we see the other positions, but we remain committed to tackling the issue in a comprehensive way,” they said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The star-spangled spanner And this time, there\u2019s also the \u201cdrill, baby, drill\u201d ethos of the Trump administration to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":43616,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[9548,891,1397,10363,819,308,2987,20824,17376,5386,90,4161,56,54,158,55],"class_list":["post-43615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-brazil","tag-china","tag-environment","tag-fiji","tag-france","tag-india","tag-oil","tag-panama","tag-plastics","tag-saudi-arabia","tag-science","tag-switzerland","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-united-states","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43615\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}